After a few false starts, it looks like traffic is clearing for Apache TomEE! This remote EE application server has just reached a new milestone for TomEE 8.0. We take a look at what’s already been sorted and what’s on the horizon for future milestones.

Apache TomEE has finally reached the first milestone for the upcoming TomEE 8.0 release! Apache TomEE is something of a catch-all project for a number of open source Apache projects for Java EE, including Apache TomCat, Apache OpenWebBeans, Apache OpenEJB, and more.

This is the first major update in a while; there has been a lot of significant work thanks to the switch from Java EE to Jakarta EE. In particular, this is the first TomEE release with support for both Java EE 8 and Jakarta EE!

TomEE 8.0 M1: Highlights

In addition, there are a number of new specs and updates for TomEE. The new JSON-B provides binding between JSON and POJOs, which is necessary for the development of modern REST APIs. There are also improvements to JSON-P and JSF.

Updates to CDI 2.0 provide support for asynchronous events, while Servlet 4.0 aligns with HTTP/2. Other updates include improvements to JAX-RS 2.1 for server-side events and a reactive client, as well as support for Java 8 APIs thanks to Bean Validation 2.0.

The all-new EE Security API is intended to simplify and update how security is handled inside the container. However, since this is only a milestone and not a full release, the EE Security API implementation is still a work in progress and won’t be available.

Apache TomEE continues to support MicroProfile, with updates to MicroProfile 1.3 now available. Developers can find updates for MicroProfile Configuration and Metrics as well as new specifications for OpenTracing, OpenAPI, and Rest Client.

Apache TomEE is also planning for the future, with support for some MicroProfile 2.0 features like CDI 2.0, JSON-P 1.1, JAX-RS 2.1, and JSON-B 1.0. There’s just a few more updates needed for Apache TomEE 8.0 to be fully compliant with MicroProfile 2.0. Future milestones should take care of that for the final release.